Directors:
Writer:
Herbert Tevos (written
for the screen by)
Stars:
Synopsis:
A couple stumbles out of the Mexican desert and recall
their tale of an evil doctor and his collection of deadly spider women and evil
dwarfs.
Review:
This is a tough one, but not all is lost. The good news is
that it’s only 69 minutes, but the bad news is that it is 69 minutes of your
life you will never get back. Have no fear because I have made the great
sacrifice for you. Typically, I have to watch these things 3 or 4 times to
write these reviews. I usually enjoy them a lot more than you’d think; just not
this time. If this had been stretched out tot the usual 90 minutes, I think
there would be some justification for a class action lawsuit provided enough
people survived watching it through to the end. I seriously doubt that the
numbers would warrant it.
So… like the synopsis says, our show opens with a couple
stumbling across a barren desert until a survey team rescues them. It’s a good
thing too, because the woman is wearing heels and a past the knee length skirt
neither of which was intended for hiking through the desert. But, the joke is
on us because what we are seeing is actually the end of our story. It is their
survival and eventual telling of the story, which is sort of strange
considering when the flash back begins, it is told from some unknown narrator
not in the film. Enter Dr. Leland Masterson.
The narrator tells us when it comes to specializing in
research; Masterson is the man, for now. I have to admit he seems interesting at
first while providing us some nice little nuggets of exposition, but then he
starts telling us stuff we didn’t need or want to know. It turns out Dr. Aranya
is very interested in the pituitary gland and hormones, and so much so, that it
makes me think this was developed for the drive-in crowd where hormones rule.
As per usual the Dr. shows Masterson a girl spider, a few evil looking dwarfs,
(what’s with evil scientists hanging out with dwarfs all the time?) and a bunch
of hot spider/chick hybrids so we can see how busy he’s been. I know they are
part spider, but they still look all girl and you don’t see many spiders with a
rack like that (I’m sure some purvey producer suggested eight boobs).
We find out that after turning down Aranya for some sort of
evil doctor fellowship and having him say he can’t leave alive, we find out
Masterson has been in an asylum for the last year. Masterson manages to escape
from the asylum in style. He gets out by making a make shift rope out of his bed
linen so he can go out through the window just like in a cartoon and just as impractical.
After getting loose he makes a beeline to the nearest bar to get a drink and finds
company in a pair of newlyweds in town due to plane trouble. The local
entertainment turns out to be a spider/chick from Aranya’s clubhouse and
Masterson shoots her during her dance. Then he takes them all hostage including
his nurse George from the asylum who had been hot on his trail.
Once Masterson finds out the newlyweds have a plane he
demands they all go to it because he wants to fly. There we get to meet Grant again, the other
half of our desert survivors from the opening. Grant tells them he’s still
having trouble with one of the engines and the plane can’t fly, but Masterson’s
Colt .45 says different. With sirens blaring in the background they all climb
aboard preferring a fiery crash in the desert to a bullet in the back. So with
such subtle foreshadowing those of you more perceptive than a 3 year old can
guess there’s going to be a crash on top of a mesa as mentioned in the tittle.
No point in dragging it out much longer, they crash land on
the same mesa the story started on. Masterson is so nuts, he doesn’t recognize
the place he was on before, or he isn’t telling anyone about it. One
interesting thing you’ll see from time to time in the film are curious
close-ups that seem out of place. I don’t mean gratuitous boob shots or giant
spiders. I mean these really strange close-ups where the backdrop doesn’t match
the scene Some times it seems like they are there like a buffer between shots,
but other times it seems they hold a bit too long like they were added for
time. At 69 minutes running time, that’s a real possibility.
A very strange and confusing part of the final 3rd
of the film is the way we keep cutting back to Dr. Aranya and his thugs
updating him on the progress of the crash survivors. At one point he seems to
think they’re all acting in accordance with some elaborate plan he had no idea
about until they crashed. The newlywed’s faithful man servant Woo seems to be
on Aranya’s payroll as he reports to him faithfully before he sets the spider
chicks on him. That’s a hell of a Double D severance package. I almost cheered
when those chicks went after him so we wouldn’t have to hear any more of his
fortune cookie proverbs, “For every man there is a day to be born and a day to
die.” Woo is great at philosophizing the obvious in a very corny deliberate slow
Kung Fu style so much that even Master Po would call bullshit on.
I won’t spoil the ending for you, mostly because I don’t
think I can since we started with the ending. I’ll say this much though, you
won’t like it. Perhaps you might remember as a kid when you went to see a great
movie, and thought the ending was great you were so sad it was over. This isn’t
one of those movies. This is more like surviving some sort of horrible
experience that everyone wants to say they were part of, but no one wants to
go. Take a chance to be one of the few survivors.
Lessons Learned:
·
If you meet a chick named Tarantella you should keep looking.
·
Film Editors are real important.
·
The desert is barren and unforgiving except on top of the mesa
covered in lush vegetation and spider/chicks.
·
Modern dance is alive and thriving in small Mexican towns.
·
Mi mesa, es su mesa.
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